Bob Dylan | Critical Essay by Thomas Meehan

Critical Essay by Thomas Meehan

Most of Dylan's reputation rests on his talents as a performer and a writer of lyrics rather than as a composer, for his melodies are fairly ordinary and decidedly derivative—although perhaps unique in that they mix for the first time the sounds of Negro blues with the twang of Nashville country music….

As a literary stylist, he seems something of an anachronism, for many of his songs are written in a manner reminiscent of the protest "Waiting for Lefty" pseudo poetry of the thirties. (p. 132)

On the other hand, future Ph.D. candidates in English, writing their theses on Dylan, will not find him that easy to pigeonhole, for he tends to write in a number of styles, among them an extraordinarily lyrical and traditional folksong style. (p. 133)